Pipe Bomb
The Pipe bomb is an IED that can be used offensively, defensively and for diversionary purposes. The visual design is stereotypical but with the addition of a bright red LED and loudly beeping smoke detector to attract Common Infected when armed and thrown. Pipe Bombs explode five to seven seconds after being deployed. Unlike a real life Pipe Bomb the in-game version explodes smokelessly. Its blast radius is relatively small, being confined to little over three to four metres on the normal difficulty setting. However since a well deployed Pipe Bomb is usually tightly surrounded with enemies, as many as 20 or more can be killed at once. Since a Pipe Bomb blast can injure a Survivor, care is needed to ensure that team mates are at a safe distance when one goes off. Pipe Bombs can be an extremely useful weapon in many situations. The Pipe Bomb can be used offensively to clear out an area, defensively against a horde or to draw off enemies from an incapped team mate, and for diversionary purposes such as when disengaging at the end of a finale. Tactics * This weapon is perfect for quickly clearing out an open area filled with loosely gathered Common Infected. A side benefit is that this mission can be achieved without expending too much precious ammo. * Apart from the Bile Jar, the Pipe Bomb is the ideal diversionary device to deploy against the horde during the final moments of a finale when sprinting for a rescue vehicle. * Deploy a Pipe Bomb to draw enemies away from a team mate who is either incapped or slimed in Boomer bile. * Do not waste Pipe Bombs but keep them in reserve for dealing with large hordes. Remember: this weapon's lethality is directly proportional to the number of enemies it can attract. * Do not throw multiple Pipe Bombs. Common Infected will run towards the first one thrown and ignore the others. * Let your teammates know when you are going to throw a Pipe Bomb. This will prevent them throwing ones themselves and allow them a moment to scamper to safe distances. * Do not throw a Pipe Bomb when a large number of enemies are climbing a fence, barrier or wall. They are programmed to complete their climb before turning and running towards the bomb, by which time the bomb may have exploded harmlessly. Enemies only respond if they are standing on the ground. * The Common Infected who are not killed outright by the explosion are stunned and thus vulnerable to a follow up attack. * The kill radius may vary with the difficulty level. * Special Infected and Uncommon Worker Infected are not attracted to Pipe Bombs (the latter ostensibily because they are wearing ear protection and cannot hear the weapon's beeping). * Witches and Tanks can be stumbled or stunned by a Pipe Bomb explosion in their close proximity. * Witches will be startled if one goes off just inside her personal space. * Pipe Bombs are virtually useless In Versus Mode since human opponents will ignore them and use their sounds and lights to evade them. * If Infected are near you, or come too close to you while running towards the pipe bomb, they will forget about it and start attacking you. Use your melee attack to push them away which will cause them to disengage, and chase after the pipe bomb. * Pipe Bombs are less effective In Left 4 Dead 2 ''since passive enemies appear to respond more slowly to their stimuli. * In ''Left 4 Dead 2 when a pipe bomb is thrown down a building or bridge the infected will still follow the pipe bomb and plunge to their deaths. This can be used during the start of Dead Center or the finale of The Parish. In Dead Center, you can get a potential double kill with it; by throwing the bomb from the lower floor and through the sky window of the lobby, you can cause the infected on the current floor and those in the lobby to be killed by it, the ones on the current floor will follow the bomb, while it will destroy the ones in the lobby. * A pipe bomb combined with Grenade Launcher fire will make a bigger explosion, and may prove useful to killing any remaining stunned Common Infected left out after the detonation. * When a Special Infected is around a corner or behind cover and cannot be shot, a Pipe Bomb can be tossed or bounced around the angle to draw him out, injure or stun him. (Note that unlike other FPS games with pre-spawned enemies,'' Left 4 Dead'' series players cannot throw Pipe Bombs around corners or into rooms on a speculative basis since The Director spawns enemies randomly and opportunistically.) Behind the Scenes According to the game's Developer Commentary, the Pipe bomb did not have the flashing light when it was originally conceived; instead, it served as a conventional grenade. There were some issues with this however: rushing Infected would ignore the grenade, and often run past it, making the Pipe bomb useless unless perfectly timed. Another, worse, problem was when the Infected not only ignored the grenade, but kicked it back toward the thrower (not in a literal sense, but it would bounce off of them). Valve fixed the problem by making the pipe bomb attract Common Infected, and added the oxygen tank to perform the role of the earlier pipe bomb. The Pipe bomb is based off of Counter-Strike's HE Grenade. Its "price" in the pipe bomb's weapon file is the same as the HE Grenade's and the Pipe bomb's sounds are in a folder called "hegrenade". It is likely that the Pipe bomb was a regular grenade at one time. Hidden in the game's files is a very early grenade icon for the HUD; this grenade looks exactly like the Counter-Strike: Source HE Grenade. This, combined with the earlier info about the Pipe bomb being based off of the HE grenade, means that the Pipe bomb was likely a regular grenade at one time. One of the proposed uses of the pipe bomb was for it to be an anti-Tank weapon. This ability is discussed in the Developer Commentary and can be seen in this video dated August 27th, 2008. While the video doesn't show the pipe bomb killing the Tank, it portrays it as useful against one. :File:Nade icon.png|The Grenade icon. :File:Pipebomb icon.png|Early HUD icon. :File:Pipebomb b.png|A Pipe bomb when it didn't have a smoke detector. :File:Weapon_pipebomb.jpg|A close up of the final version of the Pipe Bomb. Notes *The gibbing is absent in the German and Australian censored versions of Left 4 Dead 2, which instead uses the Left 4 Dead explosion graphics. *When you pull the pipe bomb out its fuse is lit, though no matter how long it is held, it will not detonate in your hand. The "permanently burning fuse" depicted when a player is holding a Pipe Bomb ready to throw is presumably a cost-saving convenient shortcut to avoid having to program the grenadier physically lighting the fuse. *In Left 4 Dead 2, Hard Rain's Uncommon Infected, the Worker Infected, will ignore pipe bombs as they wear ear protection which prevents them hearing the smoke alarm beeper. The same applies to the Infected Jimmy Gibbs Jr. However this does not explain why these classes of Infected are not simulated by the red LED, unless all types of Common Infected are primarily attracted to sound and'' not'' by either light alone or sound and light combined. (In which regard, refer the Note below that speaks to the relative attraction effects of Pipe Bombs, Bile Jars and Boomer Bile.) Support for what can be called the Sound Alone Theory can, of course, be found in many instances in the game when hordes are triggered by unexpected sound events that, to an Infected's senses, penetrate their tolerence and adjustment to ambient environmental noise. This is not to say that bright lights have no energising effect, but it may be that light motivation is less powerful and more non-directional than was at first believed. If true then in a typical encounter, passive Common Infected may be responding less to the Survivors' flashlights than to non-routine sounds (e.g. the clink of weapons, footfalls) or atypical physical manifestations such as smell or purposeful movements. Note that such stimuli have been widely observed as attack motivators amongst predatory animals - which raises yet another interesting possibility regarding the Infection's effects on its victim's central nervous system. *There is a useful glitch when you grab a pipe bomb - you can repeatedly attempt to grab two other pipe bombs, giving you four instead of three. *After you throw the pipe bomb the fuse does not get any shorter. *When a pipe bomb is thrown at the same time as a bile jar, the infected chase the pipe bomb. This may be because the infected are attracted to sound more than bile. This sound-attraction effect is consistent with what is observed when a pipe bomb is thrown after having been vomited on by a Boomer - the infected prefer the pipe bomb's sound to the smell of a Boomer-biled Survivor. *Based on the visual, the Pipe Bomb is deployed by first lighting the fuse and then pressing the (yellow) button that activates the red LED and smoke alarm beeper before throwing it. The LED and beeper are powered by a 9 volt drycell battery. The ignition and Infected attraction systems are thus independent of one another. Interestingly, the button switch does not appear to be fitted with a safety cap or anti-handling device to prevent the LED and beeper being inadvertently activated (e.g. after being bumped accidently). *As per other throwables held in inventory, Pipe Bombs are suspended from Survivors' belts. However there is no visual indication of any hooks, slings or related retention devices that are used for this purpose. *In the Sacrifice comic Part 4, it is revealed that Louis taught the Survivors how to make Pipe Bombs. The same source also hints at the type of explosive used in this weapon. However since the Survivors are never shown making such weapons for themselves and the devices they find in-game are smokeless, it may be that Louis' knowledge is of a theoretic nature and his companions have, for various practical reasons, elected not to put it to use. Category:Weapons Category:Left 4 Dead Category:Left 4 Dead 2 Category:Grenades